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(AP) - A gunman suspected of carrying out the
Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead, the deadliest
shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, was identified Tuesday as
a senior English major.

Ballistics tests show one gun was used in two attacks on the
campus Monday morning - at a dormitory were two people were killed
and in a classroom building where 31 people, including the gunman,
died locked inside, Virginia State Police said.

Police identified the classroom shooter as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, of South Korea. There was no
indication Tuesday of a possible motive for the attacks.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding
information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Cho was in the U.S. as a resident alien with a residence
established in Centerville, Va., but living on campus in Harper
Residence Hall, the university said.

After the shootingPhoto by Vincent Kline/Getty Images

Two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of because
the information had not been announced, said Cho's fingerprints
were found on the guns used in both shootings.

The serial numbers
on the two weapons had been filed off, the officials said.

One law enforcement official said Cho's backpack contained a
receipt for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol.

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State
Police, said it was reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter
in both attacks but that the link was not yet definitive.

"There's no evidence of any accomplice at either event, but
we're exploring the possibility," he said.

A memorial service was planned for the victims Tuesday afternoon
at the university, and President Bush planned to attend, the White
House said. Gov. Tim Kaine was flying back to Virginia from Tokyo
for the 2 p.m. convocation.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry also expressed its condolences,
saying there was no known motive for the shootings and that South
Korea hoped that the tragedy would not "stir up racial prejudice
or confrontation."

"We are in shock beyond description," said Cho Byung-se, a
ministry official handling North American affairs. "We convey deep
condolences to victims, families and the American people."

The first deadly attack was at the dormitory around 7:15 a.m.,
but some students said they didn't get their first warning about a
danger on campus until two hours later, in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m.
By then the second attack had begun.

Two students told NBC's "Today" show they were unaware of the
dorm shooting when they walked into Norris Hall for a German class
where the gunman later opened fire.

The victims in Norris Hall were found in four different
classrooms and a stairwell, Flaherty said. Cho was found dead in
one of those classrooms, he said.

Derek O'Dell, his arm in a cast after being shot, described a
shooter who fired away in "eerily silence" with "no specific
target - just taking out anybody he could."

After the gunman left the room, students could hear him shooting
other people down the hall.

O'Dell said he and other students
barricaded the door so the shooter couldn't get back in - though he
later tried.

"After he couldn't get the door open he tried shooting it open
... but the gunshots were blunted by the door," O'Dell said.

A federal law enforcement official said Tuesday he had been told
by other federal law enforcement officials that the two guns
recovered in the shooting had had their serial numbers scraped off.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the
information had not been announced.

The slayings left people of this mountain town and the
university at its heart praying for the victims and struggling to
find order in a tragedy of such unspeakable horror it defies
reason.

"For Ryan and Emily and for those whose names we do not know,"
one woman pleaded in a church service Monday night.

Another mourner added: "For parents near and far who wonder at
a time like this, 'Is my child safe?'"

That question promises to haunt Blacksburg long after Monday's
attacks. Investigators offered no motive, and the gunman's name was
not immediately released.

The shooting began about 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of West
Ambler Johnston, a high-rise coed dormitory where two people died.

Police were still investigating around 9:15 a.m., when a gunman
wielding two handguns and carrying multiple clips of ammunition
stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building a half-mile away on the
other side of the 2,600-acre campus.

At least 20 people were taken to hospitals after the second
attack, some seriously injured. Many found themselves trapped after
someone, apparently the shooter, chained and locked Norris Hall
doors from the inside.

Students jumped from windows, and students and faculty carried
away some of the wounded without waiting for ambulances to arrive.

SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles
swarmed over the campus. A student used his cell-phone camera to
record the sound of bullets echoing through a stone building.

Inside Norris, the attack began with a thunderous sound from
Room 206 - "what sounded like an enormous hammer," said Alec
Calhoun, a 20-year-old junior who was in a solid mechanics lecture
in a classroom next door.

Screams followed an instant later, and the banging continued.
When students realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, he
started flipping over desks to make hiding places.

Others dashed to
the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens
and jumping from the ledge of Room 204, he said.

"I must've been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I
think I was the last," said Calhoun, of Waynesboro, Va. He landed
in a bush and ran.

Calhoun said that the two students behind him were shot, but
that he believed they survived. Just before he climbed out the
window, Calhoun said, he turned to look at his professor, who had
stayed behind, apparently to prevent the gunman from opening the
door.

The instructor was killed, Calhoun said.

Erin Sheehan, who was in the German class near Calhoun's room,
told the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, that she was one
of only four of about two dozen people in the class to walk out of
the room. The rest were dead or wounded, she said.

She said the gunman "was just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but
he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest,
and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something."

The gunman first shot the professor in the head and then fired
on the class, another student, Trey Perkins, told The Washington
Post. The gunman was about 19 years old and had a "very serious
but very calm look on his face," he said.

"Everyone hit the floor at that moment," said Perkins, 20, of
Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. "And
the shots seemed like it lasted forever."

At an evening news conference, Police Chief Wendell Flinchum
refused to dismiss the possibility that a co-conspirator or second
shooter was involved.

He said police had interviewed a male who was
a "person of interest" in the dorm shooting and who knew one of
the victims, but he declined to give details.

"I'm not saying there's a gunman on the loose," Flinchum said.
Ballistics tests will help explain what happened, he said.

Some students bitterly complained that the first e-mail warning
arrived more than two hours after the first shots.

"I think the university has blood on their hands because of
their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason,
18, who lives on the seventh floor of the dorm.

University President Charles Steger emphasized that the
university closed off the dorm after the first attack and decided
to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to spread the word,
but said that with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in
the morning, it was difficult to get the word out.

He said that before the e-mail was sent, the university began
telephoning resident advisers in the dorms and sent people to knock
on doors. Students were warned to stay inside and away from the
windows.

"We can only make decisions based on the information you had at
the time. You don't have hours to reflect on it," Steger said.

The 9:26 e-mail had few details: "A shooting incident occurred
at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the
scene and are investigating."

Until Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history was
in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup
truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then
himself.

Nine students remained hospitalized Tuesday at Montgomery
Regional Hospital, all of them stable, CEO Scott Hill said. Two
others had been transferred to other hospitals with a Level I
trauma center.

Their families "are by the bedside, which is a good thing,"
Hill said.

Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem had three remaining patients,
all in stable condition, with one expected to be discharged later
Tuesday, Hill said.

The massacre Monday took place almost eight years to the day
after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. On April
20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher
before taking their own lives.

Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a
rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at
Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened
fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed
16 people before he was shot to death by police.

Founded in 1872, Virginia Tech is nestled in southwestern
Virginia, about 160 miles west of Richmond. With more than 25,000
full-time students, it has the state's largest full-time student
population. The school is best known for its engineering school and
its powerhouse Hokies football team.

Police said there had been bomb threats on campus over the past
two weeks but that they had not determined whether they were linked
to the shootings.

It was second time in less than a year that the campus was
closed because of gunfire.

Last August, the opening day of classes was canceled when an
escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus
and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff's deputy was killed just off
campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder
charges.

Among the dead were professors Liviu Librescu and Kevin Granata,
said Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and
mechanics department.

Librescu, an Israeli, was born in Romania and
was known internationally for his research in aeronautical
engineering, Puri wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Granata and his students researched muscle and reflex response
and robotics. Puri called him one of the top five biomechanics
researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral
palsy.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the
students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview,
citing e-mail he said students had sent to his family.

Ryan Clark, a student from Martinez, Ga., who had several majors
and carried a 4.0 grade-point average, was also among the victims,
said Vernon Collins, coroner in Columbia County, Ga. Clark was a
resident assistant at Ambler Johnson Hall, the dorm where the first
shootings took place.

Gregory Walton, a 25-year-old friend of Clark's who graduated
last year, said he feared the nightmare had just begun.

"I knew when the number was so large that I would know at least
one person on that list," Walton said. "I don't want to look at
that list. I don't want to.
"It's just, it's going to be horrible, and it's going to get
worse before it gets better."